French language

French (français or langue française) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. French and its closest relatives, the langues d'oïl, were once spoken in northern France and southern Belgium. Like other Romance languages, they grew from the Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman Empire. French was shaped by the older Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the Germanic Frankish language, which was spoken by the Frankish people who came after Rome fell. Over time, French took the place of most local Romance languages in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Because of French and later Belgian colonies, the language was brought to new lands in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Many French-based creole languages grew up from it, the best known being Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be called Francophone in both English and French.

French is the 22nd most natively spoken language in the world. It is the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers. It is one of the five most studied languages in the world. About 310 million people speak it, and about 74 million of them speak it from birth. French is the first language in France, Canada (Quebec), Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region), western Switzerland (the Romandy region), Luxembourg, and Monaco. In many parts of Francophone Africa, it is a second language or a lingua franca, and in some cities it has become a first language. In some North African countries, such as Algeria and Morocco, it is the main language of many educated people, along with Arabic.

French is an official language in 26 countries. People speak it in about 50 countries. Most of these countries belong to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), a group of 54 member states that share French or teach it. French is the second most common mother tongue in the European Union.

French has long been an important language for books, diplomacy and science. It is used by many international groups, including the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization, the International Olympic Committee, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many EU offices use French for work, along with English, German and Italian. In some offices, such as the Court of Justice of the European Union, French is the only working language.

History

Main article: History of French

French is a Romance language. This means it comes mainly from Vulgar Latin. It grew out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. Its early forms include Old French and Middle French. After the Romans ruled Gaul, ordinary people slowly began to use Latin, and it developed its own local character. The Gaulish language and the Germanic Frankish language also had an influence. The word oui ("yes") is one example of Gaulish influence. Old French was spoken from the late 8th to the mid-14th centuries. During the Crusades, French became so widely used around the Mediterranean Sea that it was called a lingua franca. This means it was a shared language for people who spoke different languages.

During the Middle French period, the Francien dialect grew into modern French. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, French began to take the place of Latin in laws and government. In 1539, Francis I ordered that French be the only language used for legal documents and official communication. This ended the official use of Latin. In the 17th century, French became the most important language for diplomacy, meaning the language used between countries. It kept this role until about the middle of the 20th century. Then English took over after the Second World War. In the 19th century, the French government tried to replace regional languages with French. Students were often taught that their own languages were less important. In the 21st century, French continues to grow, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is widely used in government, schools, and the media.

Geographic distribution

Main articles: Francophonie and Geographical distribution of French speakers

French is spoken on many continents. In Europe, it is the third most spoken language in the European Union, after English and German. It is an official language in France, in Belgium, in Romandy in Switzerland, in Luxembourg, and in Monaco. Most people in Abidjan and other African cities speak it. In most of Africa, it is a second language, used together with many local languages. Africa has more French speakers than any other continent, and the number is expected to keep growing there.

In the Americas, French is the second most common language in Canada. It is the only official language in Quebec. In the United States, it is an important language in some states, especially Louisiana. In Haiti, French is one of two official languages. The other is Haitian Creole. In Asia, French was the official language of French Indochina, and it is still used in some government work in Laos and Cambodia. In Oceania, French is an official language of Vanuatu. It is the only official language in New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia.

Varieties

Main article: Varieties of French

French is spoken in many different ways around the world. Here are some of them:

• African French
  • Maghreb French (North African French)
• Aostan French
• Belgian French
• Cambodian French
• Canadian French
  • Acadian French
  • Newfoundland French
  • New England French
  • Ontario French
  • Quebec French
• French French
  • Guianese French
  • Meridional French
• Haitian French
• Indian French
• Jersey Legal French
• Lao French
• Louisiana French
  • Cajun French
• Missouri French
• South East Asian French
• Swiss French
• Vietnamese French
• West Indian French

Current status and importance

About 321 million people around the world can speak French, according to the OIF. The OIF does not say how it counted them. French is seen as an influential world language because it is widely used in news writing, jurisprudence, schools, and diplomacy. Its use is growing in some places and shrinking in others. In 2014, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote that French "could be the language of the future," because it was growing in Central and West Africa. Many countries in North Africa and the Sahel have moved away from French because of their colonial past. Algeria has at times tried to end its use. French was removed as an official language in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Its use has also gone down in parts of Asia, such as Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, where local languages and English have taken its place.

French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations and one of the two working languages of the UN Secretariat. It is also an official language of NATO, the International Olympic Committee, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Organization of American States, the Eurovision Song Contest, the European Space Agency, and the World Trade Organization. It is used as a working language by the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Médecins sans Frontières, and Médecins du Monde. French is also an official language of many international courts. These include the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Caribbean Court of Justice, the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Criminal Court, and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body. It is the only internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union. At the European Court of Human Rights, it shares the role of working language with English.

In the European Union, French was the main language of all institutions until the 1990s. After the EU grew in 1995 and 2004, English gained ground. English is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French is still one of three working languages of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second most used language in EU institutions, after English. It remains the preferred language in some offices, such as the Directorate-General for Agriculture. Since 2016, Brexit has led to new discussions about whether French should play a bigger role in EU institutions. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese.

Phonology

Main article: French phonology

French has many regional accents, but people learning the language usually learn just one. French can use up to 17 vowel sounds, though not every dialect uses all of them. Some sounds differ in Meridional French, Quebec French, and Belgian French. The main "r" sound is often made at the back of the throat, a type of voiced uvular fricative. Some sounds are so close that only a few minimal pairs show the difference. The "l" sound can also change at the end of some words, which is called delateralised.

French spelling often follows history more than sound, so pronunciation rules are not always obvious. Many final letters, such as s, t, and d, are usually silent. But when the next word begins with a vowel, a silent consonant may be spoken to link the two words. This is called a liaison. Some liaisons are required, some are optional depending on the dialect and register, and some are not used. Some short words drop their final vowel before another vowel sound, and an apostrophe is written instead to avoid a hiatus. Certain set phrases also keep their own pronunciation.

Writing system

Main articles: French alphabet and French braille

Main articles: French orthography and Reforms of French orthography

French is written in the Latin script and has 26 letters. Standard French also uses the acute accent, grave accent, circumflex, diaeresis (tréma), and cedilla. These accents are not separate letters. They are kept on capital letters in standard French printing. The letters œ and æ also appear in common words, such as cœur and ex æquo. Older AZERTY keyboards often could not type these characters. This was a problem with the keyboards, not a rule of French spelling. The AFNOR organization published a voluntary keyboard standard in 2019. It was partly designed to fix this problem.

French spelling is alphabetic but fairly deep. This means it shows more than just sounds. It also shows grammar, word origins, and history. It is easier to pronounce a word from its spelling than to spell it from its sound. One sound can be written in several ways, and many letters are silent. For example, plural endings are often silent when spoken but visible in writing. Some final consonants are pronounced only in certain word combinations. This is called liaison. In 1990, the Superior Council of the French Language proposed a set of spelling changes. The Académie française approved them. These changes are recommendations, not a required replacement, so both old and new spellings are used today.

Grammar

Main article: French grammar

French changes its word forms in a moderately inflected way. Nouns and most pronouns change for number, which shows whether there is one or more than one. Adjectives change for number and gender to match the nouns they describe. Personal pronouns change for person, number, gender, and case. Verbs change for tense, aspect, and mood, and they match the person and number of their subjects. Case is mostly shown by word order and prepositions. Some verb forms use auxiliary verbs. French grammar is similar to other Romance languages in several ways. French lost the Latin declensions and the neuter gender. Its articles grew out of Latin demonstratives. French also lost some Latin tenses and made new ones with auxiliaries. Every French noun is either masculine or feminine, and the word's form does not show which. For people, the grammatical gender usually matches their sex. When speaking, the article often helps you tell singular nouns from plural ones.

Main article: French verbs

French verbs have finite moods, including the indicative mood, subjunctive mood, imperative mood, and conditional mood. The non-finite forms are the infinitive, the present participle, and the past participle. The indicative has eight tense-aspect forms. These include the simple past, the passé composé, the passé simple, the imparfait, the plus-que-parfait, the simple future, and the futur antérieur. Today, spoken French mostly uses the passé composé. The passé simple is kept mainly for formal and literary writing. French can use both the active voice and the passive voice. Its usual word order is subject–verb–object, though questions may use inversion of the subject and verb. Some sentences use verb–object–subject or object–subject–verb order, but these are less common.

Vocabulary

Most French words come from Vulgar Latin or were built from Latin or Greek roots. Often, one root appears in two forms. A "popular" form was passed down from Vulgar Latin. A "learned" form was borrowed later from Classical Latin. For example, frère (brother) and fraternel both come from Latin. Since 1994, the Toubon Law has asked the French language academies of France and Quebec to suggest French words for many English imports. Because of this, two words often exist side by side, such as mercatique and marketing. About 12% of common words in a typical dictionary, such as the Petit Larousse, come from other languages. About a quarter of those come from English. Many others come from Italian, Germanic languages, Celtic languages, and Basque.

French counts in tens for numbers from 17 to 69. For numbers from 70 to 99, it uses twenty as a base. The word for 80, quatre-vingts, means "four twenties." People in Belgium, Switzerland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi use septante for 70 and nonante for 90 instead. In Switzerland, some regions say huitante for 80.

Example text

Here is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in French:

Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit de fraternité.

And here it is in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.